Book Review Altered Seasons: Monsoonrise by Paul Briggs

Altered Seasons: Monsoonrise is a top recommendation for cli-fi (climate change fiction) readers seeking more depth than the usual approach to life-threatening environmental changes. – D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review. A few weeks with no sea ice in the Arctic Ocean are enough to trigger a chain reaction that alters the Northern Hemisphere beyond recognition. Isabel Bradshaw, an engineer, tries to find security for her family in an increasingly chaotic world when they are driven out of their home on the Chesapeake Bay.

Review

★★★★

Altered Seasons:Moonrise by Paul Briggs is a refreshing new take on the climate-change fiction with a fresh perspective that has faith in the human race coming together instead of counting on its downfall under the pressure and stress of a global disaster.

This book is a welcome take on the very popular disaster fiction and, for a change, doesn’t repeat the same age-old theme of the world falling apart at the seams under the weight of a global threat. Instead, this book focuses on how societies can come together and try to fight and re-build the threats that we all will inevitably face. The situations in this book are very relatable and characterization pretty good.

I enjoyed reading this book through the voices of different main characters (I always enjoy reading multiple POV books,) but at times it did feel like some narratives could have been a bit more polished and better. Still, looking at the entire pictures, it didn’t affect the plot (the real hero of the book) a lot, so I’m not complaining.

Overall, it is a decently written novel with great execution and good command over the language as well as the genre of writing – science-fiction and dystopia. The author’s unique style of writing (I’d say it was very theatre-like) was a very interesting and though it took me a while, eventually, I got used to the way the notes were made and even started liking it by the end of the book. The world-building was one of the best parts of this book as the author cleverly presented the world in a way that was both easy enough to grasp and complex enough to make it highly interesting to understand. The story itself was good and the concept so close to reality that it was hard to not be able to relate to the happenings in the story.

I’d recommend it to everyone who loves reading sci-fi and dystopian fiction, especially one that revolves around climate change.